Version 2.3 of the French OOO-HG project recently presented a free map collection for Open Office. The 30MB collection, which was released under a Creative Commons license, comprises graphics that Open Office users can easily embed as documents in the gallery of the free office program.

The maps, several hundred all told, can be loaded and modified using Open Office Draw. Besides maps of the world, continents and individual countries, the collection includes a substantial list of cartographic symbols for both topographical and thematic maps, such as your own weather forecasts.

The OOO-HG collection also includes historic maps which can be modified using Open Office.

In addition to this, the OOO-HG team provides numerous thematic maps, including historic maps from Sumerian to modern times, with numerous diagrams and cartograms. The complete gallery is available as a Zip archive with an installation guide on the Web.

The OpenOffice developer team has taken another step towards completion of version 2.4, which is scheduled for publication at the beginning of March, by publishing the first Release Candidate of the free office package.

The Open Office community is currently meeting at the University of Barcelona, Spain. The OOoCon 2007, which ends on Friday, focuses on the free office package and related topics such as Open Document Format.